Rhyme kept steaming forward. "Big picture . . . Let's think about it. It's Tuesday, just before dawn, on board the Dragon. You're the Ghost, a wanted man--wanted for capital offenses--and the Coast Guard is a half hour away from interdicting your smuggling ship. What would you have done?"
The gate agent continued with the boarding of the flight.
Peabody sighed. Webley from State muttered something sotto voce; Rhyme knew it was not complimentary. The Ghost stirred but he remained silent.
Since no one was helping him out Rhyme continued, "I personally would've taken my money, ordered the Dragon back out to sea full speed ahead and escaped to shore in one of the life rafts. The Coast Guard and cops and INS would've been so busy with the crew and immigrants I could easily've gotten to land and been halfway to Chinatown before they realized I was gone. But what'd the Ghost do?"
Rhyme glanced at Sachs, who said, "He locked the immigrants in the hold, sank the ship and then hunted down the survivors. And he risked getting caught or killed to do it."
"And when he didn't kill them all on the shore," Rhyme took over the narrative, "he followed them to the city and tried to murder them there. Why on earth would he do that?"
"Well, they were witnesses," Peabody said. "He had to kill them."
"Ah, why? That's the question that nobody's asking." Rhyme asked, "What would it gain him?"
Peabody and Webley from State were silent.
Rhyme continued, "All that the passengers on the ship could do is to testify in one case of human smuggling. But there were already a dozen warrants against him for smuggling around the world. Homicide charges too--look at the Interpol Red Notice. It made no sense to go to all that trouble to murder them just because they were witnesses." He paused a histrionic few seconds. "But killing them makes perfect sense if the passengers were his intended victims."
Rhyme could see two different reactions in their faces. Peabody was perplexed and surprised. In Webley from State's eyes there was a different look. He knew exactly where Rhyme was going.
"'Victims,'" Rhyme continued. "That's a key word. See, my Sachs found a letter when she went for her little swim in the Dragon."
The Ghost, who'd been staring at Sachs, turned slowly toward Rhyme when he heard this.
"A letter?" Peabody asked.
"It said, more or less, here's your money and a list of the victims you'll be taking to America . . . . Are we catching on to the big picture, gentlemen? The letter didn't say 'passengers' or 'immigrants' or 'piglets'--or your own indelicate term, Peabody, 'undocumenteds.' The letter said quote 'victims.' I didn't realize at first when I had the letter translated that that was the exact word the writer used. And the big picture becomes a lot clearer when we look at who those victims were--they were all Chinese dissidents and their families. The Ghost isn't just a snakehead. He's also a professional killer. He was hired to murder them."
"This man is crazy," the Ghost snapped. "He's desperate. I want to leave now."
But Rhyme said, "The Ghost was planning all along to scuttle the Dragon. He was only waiting until the ship was close enough to shore so that he and his bangshou could make it to land safely. But a few things went wrong--we found the ship and sent the Coast Guard in, so he had to act sooner than he'd planned; some of the immigrants escaped. Then the explosive was too powerful and the ship sank before he could get his guns and money and find his assistant."
"That's absurd," muttered Webley from State. "Beijing wouldn't hire anybody to kill dissidents. It's not the 1960s anymore."
"Beijing didn't do it," Rhyme responded, "as I suspect you probably know, Webley. No, we found out who sent the Ghost his instructions and his money. Ling Shui-bian is his name."
The Ghost glanced desperately at the boarding gate.
Rhyme continued, "I sent the Fuzhou police an email with Ling's name and address and told them that I thought he was one of the Ghost's partners. But they sent back a message saying I must be mistaken. His address was a government building in Fuzhou. Ling is the Fujian governor's assistant in charge of trade development."
"What's that mean?" Peabody asked.
"That he's a corrupt warlord," Rhyme snapped. "Isn't it obvious? He and his people're getting millions in kickbacks from businesses all along the southeastern coast of China. He's probably working with the governor, but I don't have any evidence about that. Not yet, anyway."
"Impossible," offered Webley though with much less bluster than he'd displayed earlier.
Rhyme said, "Not at all. Sonny Li told me about Fujian Province. It's always been more independent than the central government likes. It has the most connections with the West and Taiwan--more money too. And the most active dissidents. Beijing is always threatening to crack down on the province, nationalize businesses again and put its own people in power. If that happens, Ling and his boys lose their income stream. So, how to keep Beijing happy? Kill the most vocal dissidents. And what better way to do it than by hiring a snakehead? If they die en route to another country it's their own fault, not the government's."
"And more likely than not," Sachs said, "nobody'd even know that they died. They'd be just one more shipload of the vanished." Nodding at Webley from State, she reminded, "Rhyme?"
"Oh, right. The last piece of the puzzle. Why's the Ghost going free?" He said to Webley, "You're sending him back to keep Ling and his people in Fujian happy. To make sure our business interests aren't affected. Southeast China is the biggest site for U.S. investment in the world."
"That's bullshit," the man snapped in reply.
The Ghost said, "This is ridiculous. It's the lie of a desperate man." Nodding toward Rhyme. "Where's the proof?"
"Proof? Well, we have the letter from Ling. But if you want more . . . Remember, Harold? You told me that other shiploads of the Ghost's immigrants disappeared in the past year or so. I checked the statements from their relatives in the Interpol database. Most of those victims were dissidents from Fujian too."